Trump Continues Baseless Claims of Voter Fraud in New Hampshire
VP Pence’s defunct ‘election integrity commission’ specifically traveled to NH to sniff out voter fraud. They left with their tails between their legs.
Our Lying President
The man lies. Through his teeth. And if you observe closely, you can’t really discern any sort of clever deception. Trump continually spews his string of lies that can be unproven by a casual internet search. This is the president of the United States.
Donald Trump held one of his signature rallies this past Aug. 16 in Manchester, NH, where the bullcrap was being flung far and wide. Astoundingly, the crux of what Trump was claiming was discredited…officially laid to rest….two years ago. We’ll get to that.
Here is a short, two-minute video summary of Trump’s New Hampshire voter fraud claims, published by WMUR-TV via YouTube:
Trump said this to the arena crowd: “We should have won here. It was taken away from us…[because] we had a lot of people come in at the last moment…thousands and thousands of people coming in from locations unknown. But I knew where the location was.”
Of course Trump has never disclosed the mysterious location of those thousands of people.
For the record, Trump lost New Hampshire’s four electoral vote by a margin of 3,000. A University of New Hampshire poll released in mid-August has the president underwater with 42% approval rating and 53% disapproval in the state. Even so, Trump told rally-goers that “I’m tied with the Democrats in New Hampshire.”
Elections Chief Chimes In
Trump’s wild, evidence-free assertions at the New Hampshire rally brought a scolding from the chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Ellen Weintraub, who was selected by the George W. Bush administration.
On FEC letterhead, Weintraub wrote: “Our democracy depends on the American people’s faith in our elections….Baseless allegations of voter fraud have been used to rationalize indefensible laws that deter certain US citizens from exercising their right to vote. Words matter, and facts matter.”
The “Election Integrity” Commission
In January 2018 President Trump officially dissolved his election integrity commission, after it could not find one single instance of voter fraud. Trump had appointed his vice president, Mike Pence, to lead the commission. Pence’s right-hand man was Kris Kobach, a virulent voter suppression advocate who was at the time Kansas’s secretary of state.
Kobach’s “Gotcha” Moment Fails Miserably
Pence and Kobach thought they were onto something when there were stirrings within GOP circles that there were over 5,000 fraudulent votes in New Hampshire during the 2016 election. There was a glimmer of hope, however faint, of actual voter fraud.
The stakes were high. Not only did candidate Trump lose New Hampshire by a mere two percentage points. The Senate race between Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Maggie Hassan broke for Hassan by…well, see for yourself in the image below. It was damn close.
Raw voter registration data revealed that polling places in mainly New Hampshire college towns were registering to vote non-residents. Kobach wrote about it in Breitbart News and then he and his motley crew ventured up to Manchester in mid-September, 2017, to hold hearings on this explosive allegation.
Well, boys, stop the high-fiving for a moment: there’s nothing like the nuisance of a state law to get in the way of a career achievement.
Moment of Truth
New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner carefully explained to the panel that a person can lawfully vote in New Hampshire while holding a driver’s license or vehicle registration from another state. They just have to be domiciled in the state for most of their time…like, say, college students.
But ho ho, shot back Kobach. How about 5,300 voters who had failed to get New Hampshire drivers licenses within the lawful 60 days after moving to New Hampshire?
Gardner: Our state Supreme Court made a clear distinction between residency and domicile. It is not necessary for the 5,300 voters in question to become residents for their votes to be valid.A voter can prove domicile by:
providing a form issued by a New Hampshire college or university…a monthly bill, a medical bill, pay stubs showing current address or postmarked mail within the last thirty days.
No voter fraud. And guess who paid for that junket.
And Trump’s still lying about it. Remember this nugget:
